Phrygian vs Dominant

[Passante]

Do you know songs which use both the phrygian and its dominant variant?
So far Google suggested me Radiohead's Pyramid Song.

In your opinion why aren't there more songs employing both? What is the issue?
If you have more suggestions pls do share...

[jancivil]

Who knows. I mean Misirlou by Dick Dale and The Deltones uses the double harmonic scale, seems exotic maybe but it charted.

I do have a suggestion, we might like to call it something objective that people versed in music theory can understand and not have to google. The word 'dominant' isn't real apt for what it is, which is the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale. Everybody that has the two facts, the harmonic minor scale intervallically, and what modalizing a scale does knows how to form it now.

In fairness I also found the Berklee method's name for it almost as dodgy

IE: fifth mode and "the V chord" (aka the dominant harmony in major/minor tonality) is just a coincidence.

[kvotchin]

An awful lot of songs just use one scale, or mode thereof. I know, not all, but indeed many.

And Phrygian plus Phrygian Dominant seems like a pretty unlikely combo, gotta say. But now I’m going to have to find out, just to be sure. So… thanks? :p

[jancivil]

there's a fairly awful Wiki on the scale. Take C harnonic minor: C D Eb F G Ab B; G Ab B C D Eb F. Transpose back to C: C Db E F G Ab Bb. The 'Berklee method' calls it Mixolydian b9 b13 as though to impose jazz vocabularly onto this really pretty ancient Middle Eastern to Southern Asia scale. I could say Phrygian but major 3rd, but I hate these kinds of names.

[FranklyFlawless]

Do you know songs which use both the phrygian and its dominant variant?

No, only one or the other, and even then I do not recall either of them being commonly used to begin with.

In your opinion why aren't there more songs employing both? What is the issue?

Tritone.

[BBFG#]

[Passante]

Wow, nice find. Definitely an intricate sound. It's just not something you hear often, very refreshing.

edit: Oh gosh, just saw this one is from 1976! Amazing find!

[jancivil]

As to jazz scale/chord names like that Berklee one, I'm accustomed to the word 'dominant' indicating something that sets off a dominant seventh chord by its attendant extensions. I've never thought the concept Mixolydian a good jumping off point* in jazz. Compounding my problem of <this one is just not Mixolydian> in any way I can use.
"flat 9, flat 13": it's a flat 2 before it's any ninth. Mixolydian is out the window entirely.

(*: There is a stupid conception promoted in certain jazz theory literature where Mixolydian confers a V chord. No. If there's a V chord there's a key, denoted by a I chord. Then Dorian is to confer the ii chord. We have three names for one scale now. an utter waste of mentation.)

BUT if the idea is not scale/chord application but instead seven note chords... still you need a sensible name for the thing.

[jancivil]

The Jan Hammer thing is really something. I never heard of it. It would not be an easy thing to trascribe or analyze.

[BBFG#]

According to an AI assistant, the dominant in Phrygian is the major third?
I bought that album the first month it came out and it's been a standard for me since. Prior to that, I also bought and listened to Zappa a lot, especially the Duke/Underwood years. I definitely hear the influence in jancivil's music posted and enjoy it more than many of musical posts on KVR. I suggest most of the early years with Hammer, from Mahavishnu to Beck. Chick Corea often uses the Dominant Phrygian as well, but can't think of anything right off hand that uses both variations.

[jancivil]

Phrygian hasn't a major third though.
So this scale has a major third and a minor seventh, which are components of a major minor seventh chord. In context of tonal, harmonic function that serves as a dominant seventh chord. In say James Brown where it sits there going nowhere that's a misnomer, it strictly applies to a function known in the dominant/tonic paradigm, another term for tonal function.
It contains a minor second from its 'tonic'. I offered that one could call it Phrygian with a major third.

these are niggles and pet peeves, it doesn't much matter what we call it.

thanks for the generous remark! I saw Hammer with Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1973. It was the most mind-blowing thing I'd heard since Ravi Shankar in the Monterey Pop film. I think only matched since when I saw Shakti at Bogart's Bar and Grill in Cinci. The tabla player (recently deceased) Zakir Hussein was Alla Rakha's (Ravi Shankar's drummer in that performance) son.
For real, life-changing.

[BBFG#]

As that AI explained, Phrygian has a minor second and a minor third. It's the Dominant Phrygian (also called a Spanish Phrygian) that use a minor second and a major third. Hammer seems to use one as a leading tone to the other or a lead/resolve in the cadence. Hammer is still on my bucket list of desired live concerts. We got lucky a few years ago in seeing Corea's Elektric Band twice and Bela Fleck's Flecktones once with them. Outstanding shows! Just prior to those we got to see Jeff Beck with Dweezil Zappa Band coheadligning.
I've seen Frank Zappa twice back in the 70's, albeit with some Inglewood city censorship requiring his "dancers" wearing what he called body socks. And the second being a fluke of a contract snafu requiring him to play the city he said he would never play. It was easy to see he was not happy about it. (If he didn't have a specific part that only he could do, he turned his back on the audience, sat in a chair and turned down his guitar. Leaving the hired guns to fill in the blanks.) Only those of us that knew, got why and respected him for it. The "yellow snowers" were overly confused though.

Somehow, that influence also made me a Tubes fan, which I've seen six times. The only band I've seen more is one that I never actually cared to see but went to see someone else.

[jancivil]

I was familiar with both scales when I was 17. This was my thing, to a fault, what some call synthetic scales.
My only really salient point in all this was this is the fifth mode of harmonic minor without creating semi-quasi-descriptive names. I forget what is what, I had to google this one. Its name was familiar from somewhere, half a century ago prob'ly and I likely have seen it here. The internet has people saying it's a good scale [ie., for extensions] over a dominant 7th; doesn't work for me if its tonic is from 5 because we have a natural 11th which is rare in jazz harmony over a V7 type. I've seen it I think twice, one was a Wayne Shorter chart.

I only got to see Frank in 1978 with the '77 and early '78 group with Bozzio. In Cincinnati, at the same venue a number of people got crushed to death in a rush at a The Who concert. Getting through the gate this time was like that a bit. Cinci is a truly f**ked town. This was clearly still fresh in Frank's mind; the finale was to be Strictly Genteel. "Ok we're now going to do this orchestral composition wth six pieces". But people started moving toward the stage. He asked them to please remain seated, that he didn't want to see the cops bashing heads in. His sense of the vibe was accurate. After the third time he stopped he said house lights up, we're out of here.

Before I went away to school I'd always lived in Charlotte NC. He appears to have quit going there after breaking the 1969 MOI up there. His story was this was Charlotte's Park Center and he'd seen Duke Ellington beg for $20 from a promoter or somebody and he was having trouble paying this big a group as it was, took this as a sign. Possibly apocryphal, though I'd trust his sense of place implicitly.
I'd never heard of him in 1969. This girl from the wrong side of the tracks as they say and I traded albums back and forth, she had Mothermania. 1970.

i saw Return to Forever in probably 1976. Got to see Jeff Beck, with Beck, Bogert and Appice.

I got to see Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at Stern Grove here, seems like 2000. having a hard time refreshing my memory by searches. They did Within You, Without you with Sandip Berman on tabla and someone more famous, name escapes me on Sarangi. but the 'net doesn't know anything or even that they played the song. It seems like they had Paul Hanson on bassoon guesting. I've jammed with him, he was a mutual acquaintance through school. I remember being kind of shocked because that jam he played shit and listened not at all, but overwhelmed the whole thing showing off. It was a drag.
He apparently grew up. He sounded great wherever I caught that.